Face The Morning
by ShadowCatFan
Summary: Sequel to Crying in the Dark. Scott comes home. Everyone has to face the morning, and all the repercussions of the night before. r&r please


Title: Face the Morning  
Notes: The sequel to Crying in the Dark. JenN didn't get Crying in the Dark. This fic is  
based on many IM's with her, trying to explain what happened in Crying in the Dark.  
Summary: Scott comes home. Everyone has to face the morning, and all the repercussions of the night before.  
  
Part 1:  
He stopped because he was out of money and was unwilling to call the Professor for more. He stayed because it was, well because it was the exact opposite of Westchester. It was warm here, bright, empty. When it rained the rain was cleansing and healing. And the stars here...so bright, so clear. He wished Kitty could see them.  
"Hey bartender! Gimme another!" A kid called. Scott rolled his eyes behind his glasses. Who would think he'd end up a bartender? That had been Logan's scene, not his. He pulled a beer up from behind the counter and slid it down to the kid.  
All in all it was not a bad gig. He'd been out of Westchester for a year, been in New Mexico for six months. It was an amazingly small town. So small in fact, that the bar Scott worked in was the only bar in town. He idly wiped the bar with a cloth.  
"Have you ever been betrayed?" A girl asked suddenly, her face streaked with tears. Scott, sighed, he'd never been good at being a confidante, an advisor.  
~ The one downfall to bartending, you're expected to listen.~  
"Once or twice," He told her.  
"How did you deal with it?"  
~ Well, I was forced out of my home and told not to come back. So I didn't.~ "I, uh, accepted it. We all make mistakes. And I, um, I have to hope that my betrayers regret their actions," Scott sighed.  
"You're saying I should just get over it?" the girl asked, bewildered.  
"I'm saying I got over it. I don't know the circumstances of your betrayal." ~All this time and I still sound like a teacher.~ "You have to decide whether who ever betrayed you is worth going back, or not."  
"I guess." That was what annoyed Scott. He empathized with these people, put his heart into advising them, and all he got out of it was an "I guess."  
The bar, like many others, closed at one AM. Scott got home most nights by two or so, and when he got back he usually crashed. It was one of the things he had slowly gotten used to and learned to love, this lack of rigidity. If his students could see him now - tan and stubbly, t-shirts and jeans. He didn't think he'd owned a pair of jeans when he'd lived at the mansion.   
He was a sound sleeper, always had been. So it was odd that he woke up at six instead of his usual nine or ten. "Huh?" he mumbled fumbling for his glasses.  
~*Scott this is the Professor. You may come home now.*~  
"Home? Huh? Why are you talking to me at...six in the morning?"  
~*To Westchester, Scott. You weren't awake?*~  
"Uh, no." Scott was thinking, and he'd gotten a little less than four hours of sleep. "What if I don't want to go back?" he asked.  
~*Why wouldn't you want to come home?* ~  
"Because you don't trust me, you kicked me out, you betrayed me...must I go on?" Scott asked.  
~*No. I can understand your reluctance. There is, of course, no pressure. But Westchester has been your home for many years.*~  
But, and though Scott was reluctant to admit it, the mansion on Greymalkin Lane was home. Not his shabby, one room apartment, though it had become a sanctuary. And what was the point of being in New Mexico if he hadn't learned how to survive at the mansion?  
Scott looked back through the rearview mirror of his dusty white pick-up truck as he left. The little town would always be part of his heart.  
  
Part 2:  
Kitty was grading papers when Bobby came to stand in her doorway.  
"He's coming back," Bobby told her. Kitty looked up. Somehow, even after a year, she couldn't quite meet Bobby's eyes.  
"Who?"  
"Scott, Kitty. Scott's coming home."  
She didn't feel the joy she thought she should. She'd learned that after crying in the dark you have to face the morning with all of the repercussions of the night before. Kitty had coped through out the last year, changed. She'd fought herself too hard to ever again be the Angel of the X-Men that everyone expected her to be. Kitty had raged silently for months, like a bird in a cage, trapped. She had damned everything around her, and came out...old. Infinite. Everything was deeper, her sorrows, her joys. She wondered if anyone else saw her as different. She certainly felt different. Her faith had been wiped away. Some days she believed she could never love or be loved again. In many ways she resented Scott, he hadn't had to cope the way she had, he hadn't lost all that she did.   
"Bobby?" she asked, "do you think I've changed?" Bobby tilted his head, thinking.   
"Since when?"  
"Since Scott left."  
"I don't know Kit...everything's changed since Scott left."  
That was true, undeniably. Bobby had moved on, fallen in love just as Kitty had realized that she loved Bobby.   
"Bobby! Scott's gonna be back for your wedding?"   
"Yeah. I asked the Professor to invite him home. Scott doesn't really know about the wedding, yet," Bobby admitted.  
"Hmm..." Kitty and Bobby had managed to, despite everything, become friends again. Kitty wondered, as she wondered about so many things lately, if Scott ever would have happened if Kitty and Bobby would have had a deeper friendship first, and then love.  
"Hmm... what Kitty?" Bobby asked.  
"Oh. I just wondered if maybe the reason you invited Scott home had very little to do with you and very much to do with the wedding?" Kitty smiled softly. Bobby had always tended to the overprotective.   
"It might have something to do with it," Bobby half-smiled. "It also has to do with the fact that it's been a year, and we've all moved on."  
"Have we? Have we really? Because I feel like we've all run away from it. And now that Scott's coming back we really are going to face it head on," Kitty told Bobby.  
"I think you're wrong. At least, partly. We've moved on. Or at least we're in different places now than we were when Scott left."   
Kitty looked straight up at him, chin in the air, innocent looking. "You feel differently about what happened than you did a year ago?"  
"No. Not really."   
  
Part 3:  
He arrived in the late afternoon and his first thought was that the mansion was bigger than he remembered. It was intimidating, foreboding. He suddenly empathized with the nervous students who came up the drive for the first time, not knowing what to expect.  
Scott took a long, deep breath of humid air and instantly missed New Mexico. He wondered momentarily if he could just turn the truck around. But he knew it was too late. The Professor was aware by now of Scott's arrival, and Scott would not be escaping.  
The Professor met Scott at the door.   
"It's good to have you home," the Professor welcomed Scott. Scott instantly thought of his tiny apartment in New Mexico. ~No,~ Scott mentally chided himself, ~1407 Greymalkin Lane is home.~  
"Thank you, sir." Scott followed the Professor to his new room, wondering why Kitty hadn't been waiting to greet him.  
"Scott, I know this situation is awkward," the Professor told him, "but we really are glad to have you back. All of us."  
"Thank you. I'm glad to know that."  
"We're having a small celebration tonight in your honor. Nothing formal, just a chance to 'hang-out' as they say," the Professor informed him with a smile. "I'll let you unpack and get settled now. Dinner is still at six, immediately followed by your party. As for the business end of things, all that can be discussed tomorrow."  
"Thank you, Professor."   
He was fiercely dreading dinner. The stares, the whispers, facing Jean, and Kitty. He hadn't thought he would dread seeing Kitty. She was his ally. But things were different now. He clasped his hands behind his back, a gesture he hadn't used in a long time, and walked into the dining room.  
No one really noticed his entrance. A few students greeted him as he walked to   
the staff table. Kitty stood, hugged him. Bobby extended a hand, ready to forgive and forget. Jean turned her head away, unable to look at him.   
So dinner was an awkward experience. Everyone trying to talk around the discomfort. It was what had started the darkness. No one willing to say what they actually thought.  
Scott was surprised by his eagerness to leave dinner for the party. His emotions were beyond him at the moment.  
The music was blaring and the ballroom was casually decorated. The mingling made it easier to face people, the pressure was off.  
Scott scanned the room for Kitty. They needed to talk. The ghosts and shadows and cobwebs of the past year had to be cleared out, and a unified front should be presented.  
He saw her slip out the door and run down to the lake. He wondered if he should follow her.  
  
Part 4:  
She scooted over to make room for him at the end of the dock. They dangled their feet in the water for a long time before Bobby spoke.  
"You were right you know, about having to face everything and accept it."  
"I know. That's why I'm not up there," Kitty gestured to the top of the hill where the mansion sat and one room glowed brightly. The music of the party almost reached Bobby and Kitty. "That, and this intense desire to be as far from Scott as possible."  
"Why?"  
"I resent him. He got to be free. I got trapped. I know he wants to talk to me, and I, we aren't alike anymore, the bond between me and Scott is shattered."  
"I should be happy about that. I don't know why Scott's return is such a problem for me. It's over, done. I'm getting married in two days," Bobby sighed.  
"It is over."  
Bobby smacked the deck in frustration. "I just don't understand!"  
"What's left to understand?" Kitty asked with surprise.  
"Everything...how you justified it." Bobby clarified.  
"We didn't really. Everything was so...hazy, I guess. We were depressed, really depressed. It wasn't merely a having-a-bad-day kinda feeling. It was just bizarre coincidence that we were feeling the same way at the same time." Kitty explained.  
"A bizarre coincidence that helped to ruin my life," Bobby said bitterly.  
"Now you're being melodramatic, and you know it."  
"Fine. Go back to justifying," Bobby requested.  
"I wasn't justifying! That was the whole point, we didn't justify. We knew what we'd done wasn't right, but I don't think either of us ever saw it as truly wrong until after Scott left," Kitty told him.  
"Why did you not see cheating on me as wrong?!" Bobby wasn't angry, just puzzled.  
"Because I wasn't thinking of it as cheating. I still loved you. I didn't love Scott. The sex was just...oh, I don't know, I means to an end. After that Scott and I had a bond, and being together eased our depression. Does that make any sense?" Kitty asked.  
"Not really, but I can kinda see how it made sense to you guys. Okay, so why did you take so long to realize that you guys really had done something wrong?" Bobby wondered.  
"Because, and here's the main point, it was never about sex, or love, or cheating. We just needed a friend. We kept waiting for you guys or the Professor to give us a chance to explain. We were hurting and you guys wouldn't see that. And ultimately, yeah, it was wrong. But I don't know what I'd do differently, if I could."   
"You'd still go to Scott?" Bobby asked.  
"That's the other thing. I didn't go to Scott. We just kinda bumped into each other," Kitty told him.  
"Fine. But you didn't answer my question, would you still have gone to Scott?" Bobby asked a little more insistently.  
"In a perfect world, no. I would've gone to you, told you how I felt, asked you to help me," Kitty told him, shivering slightly at the night breeze. She looked at Bobby sadly, thinking about all the what-ifs that could have kept them together. She turned and studied the water. "You should probably go, I'm sure your fiancée is waiting for you."   
"Kitty..." Bobby said as he stood hesitantly.  
"Yes?"  
"Don't stay out here too long. It's getting cold."  
"Bobby, you don't have to protect me from the dark. I can do that, I've been doing that for almost two years," Kitty smiled sadly as she watched her friend's retreating back.  
  
Part 5:  
They were avoiding him. All of them. Didn't anyone see that they would get nowhere until they all talked? Scott sighed in frustration.  
"Bobby!" Scott suddenly spotted his former student.  
"Hey Scott. What can I do for you?" Bobby asked.  
" Things around here aren't exactly what I expected."  
"Yeah?"  
"Yeah. Like you getting married," Scott pointed out. Bobby shrugged.  
"There was a reason you and Kitty did what you did. I moved on."  
"You're breaking Kitty's heart," Scott pointed out.  
"No I'm not. Kitty doesn't love me like that, not really. Talk to Kitty," Bobby suggested and turned to walk away.  
"I can't talk to Kitty, she's avoiding me!" Scott exclaimed.  
"Yeah," Bobby said thoughtfully, chewing his lip. "So corner her."  
~Well that had certainly been less than helpful~ Scott mentally grumbled thinking about his conversation with Bobby. But the kid had been right about one thing, cornering. Which was why Scott was on his way to the med-lab. To corner Jean, who despite her key role, had been surprisingly silent in this story.  
"Jean," Scott greeted his former fiancée who was bent over a microscope. Jean jumped.  
"Scott," she acknowledged stonily.  
"Jean, we need to talk," Scott pressured gently. Jean glared at him.  
"Why? You cheated on me. It's over."  
"Yes, but, we still have to work together. It might be easier-" Jean cut him off.  
"Easier? Scott you are very good at taking the easy way out. If you want a pleasant working environment may I suggest," Jean steped closer to him, "LEAVING ME ALONE!" she yelled. Scott turned and left the room. He hoped his conversation with Kitty went a little better than his conversation with Jean.  
  
Part 6:  
  
I wasn't looking for a lifetime with you.  
I never thought it would hurt just to hear,  
"I do" and "I do."  
It was an undeniably beautiful ceremony. The garden at twilight was the perfect place for a wedding, and the flowers were just right. Kitty smoothed her ballgown as she watched the bride walk down the aisle. The irony of being in Bobby's wedding party had not escaped her.   
And I do a number on myself  
And all that I thought-to be,  
And you'll be the one  
Who just left me undone   
By my own, hesitation.  
Bobby and his bride were glowing, so in love that Kitty was almost glad she had cheated on Bobby. This was right, but it broke her heart just the same.  
And for the million hours that we were  
Well I'll smile and remember it all,  
Then I'll turn and go.  
Kitty tried to sit at the table and smile pleasantly, but she couldn't. She could feel the eyes on her, watching, waiting, as dancers swirled across the floor. Kitty got up and walked to the furthest reaches of the garden, where only the music and laughter could reach her.   
While your story's completed mine is a long way from done.  
I'm on a champagne high  
Where will I be when I stop wondering why?  
On a champagne high -high.  
Scott watched Kitty leave. She wasn't the young woman he had been forced to abandon. She seemed old, eternal, resigned. Scott was reluctant to follow Kitty, but remembered Bobby's advice to corner her.  
Spring turned to summer, but then winter turned to mean.  
The distance seemed right at the time it was best -to leave,  
And to leave behind  
What I once thought was fine and so real -to me  
"Kitty?" Scott asked as he walked through the bushes to where she sat.  
"Hey Scott," Kitty wrapped her arms around her knees.  
"It's been awhile," Scott sat feeling awkward.  
"Yeah, it has been," Kitty agreed and her voice gave Scott the impression of infinite knowledge.  
"So. Why have you been avoiding me?" Scott blurted out. Kitty turned towards him with a look of surprise on her face.  
"Avoiding you?" Kitty sighed. "Because I resent you."  
"Resent me?"  
"Yes. You got away. I've spent the last year," Kitty sat up straight and clenched her fists, "fighting. I've been beating myself against this gilded cage and fighting for every breath. While you were on..." Kitty couldn't keep the contempt out of her voice, "vacation."  
"I wasn't on vacation," Scott told Kitty with slight annoyance. "I was thrown out of my home."  
"Yes. But you got to come home," Kitty struggled to explain what she was thinking. "My world got turned upside down. I never get to come home. Xavier's School for the Gifted doesn't exist for me anymore. I don't exist for me anymore, I'm someone else," Kitty sighed, "someone I'm not necessarily sure I like."  
And while I'm still gone  
On the Quest for my song  
I'm at your, celebration.   
And for the million hours that we were  
Well I'll smile and remember it all,  
Then I'll turn and go.  
While your story's completed mine is a long way from done  
"I'm sorry Kitty," Scott paused for a long moment and enjoyed the stillness and background noise of celebration. "So how do we fix this?"  
"Are you happy here Scott?" Kitty turned to face him.  
"Not really. I feel like I missed something, like I skipped a step." Kitty nodded thoughtfully.  
"You never faced the morning."  
"What?"  
"It all happened too quickly. Xavier never gave you a chance to face the morning," Kitty spoke quickly.  
"Explain what you mean by facing the morning," Scott requested.  
"Oh! After crying in the dark, which we did, you have to face the morning and all the repercussions of the night before. Does that make any sense?" Kitty asked.  
"I think so. What you're saying is I never dealt with people knowing, and interacting with the people I hurt, all of that?"  
"Yeah. And now, everyone thinks they've moved on and they don't want to deal with it or they'll be back at square one," Kitty agreed.   
I'm on a champagne high  
Where will I be when I stop wondering why?  
On a champagne high  
Toast to the future but that'd be a lie.  
"So now we...?" Scott wondered.  
"Go with the flow I guess, and cross each bridge as we come to it," Kitty suggested. Scott hugged her.  
"You're a good friend Kitty Pryde."  
"Thank you." Both Kitty and Scott stood.  
"So now it's back to the party?" Scott asked.  
"Yeah, and maybe now we can try to enjoy it."  
On a champagne high -high.  
Your wagon's been hitched to a star.  
Well now he'll be your thing that's new.  
Yeah what little I have you can borrow.  
'Cause I'm old (I'm old) I'm blue.  
From a quiet corner of the garden Jean watched Kitty and Scott talk contently How could they be so content? Jean looked over at Bobby's wedding, how could he be so content? He'd been hurt just as badly as she had been. The other day, Scott had been so insistant about talking it out. Maybe that was it. Maybe Bobby, Scott, and Kitty, understood whatever it was that had gone on last year. Maybe... maybe talking wouldn't be opening up old wounds, but healing them instead.  
And for the million hours that we were  
Well I'll smile and remember it all,  
Then I'll turn and go-  
"Kitty?" Bobby asked his friend as she re-entered the party, "Care to dance?"  
"Sure Bobby," Kitty accepted his invitation and followed him onto the dance floor. As the music started and Bobby drew Kitty close he asked,  
"You okay?"  
"Yeah. I'm better, I think. Now I know where I'm supposed to be going," Kitty sighed a soft, happy little sigh.  
"Where?"   
On a champagne high (so high)  
Where will I be when I stop wondering why?  
On a champagne high (so high)  
Toast to the future but that'd be a lie.  
Kitty raised her glass of champagne, "I would like to propose a toast to Mr. and Mrs. Drake. May your future be bright and warm, and always know you have a friend in me."  
On a champagne high (so high)  
Where will I be when I stop wondering why?  
On a champagne high -high (so high)  
(So high you left me undone...)  
Scott waited with Kitty as they watched the last of the guests trickle into the mansion. Kitty watched the light in Bobby's window dim and go out. "I'll always love him, you know?"  
"I know. Some people are hard not to love." Kitty rested her hand on Scott's shoulder.  
"So what's next?"  
"I think there's only one thing to do," Scott said with a yawn.  
"Go to bed?" Kitty suggested.  
"After that I meant. We've cried in the dark, and we're facing the morning, so now all that's left is to seize the day." 


End file.
